Café du Monde submitted the highest bid to operate the café au lait and beignet stand in New Orleans City Park, but attorneys must review all three submitted bids before a lease can be awarded, Bob Becker, CEO of the park, said on Wednesday (Dec. 19).

Café du Monde was awarded the lease earlier this summer, but a second bidding process was necessary after Morning Call disputed the results of that first go-round.

“They are the apparent high bidder, but all of the bids have to be taken under advisement by our attorneys,” Becker said Wednesday of Café du Monde. “Nothing can be finalized until we review the full submission by each party.”

“We started our attorneys on them right now,” he said. “It’s certainly our hope to conclude this process quickly.”

Café du Monde bid $25,760 per month; Café Beignet, $25,100; and Morning Call, $23, 800. Each bidder also agreed to pay 10 percent of its gross revenue and to pay for renovations to the bathrooms and kitchen in the building.

Morning Call’s lease ended in 2017 and City Park officials opted to put the restaurant space out for bid rather than renew that lease, Becker said. Since then, Morning Call had been operating on 30-day lease, he said.

In the first go-round, Morning Call had submitted the highest bid, $10,000 a month in rent plus 10.5 percent of gross revenue. The park had rejected that bid saying that company owner missed a mandatory meeting. Cafe du Monde, which bid $10,000 a month in rent plus 10.25 percent of gross revenue, was awarded the lease in June.

If Morning Call is not the winning bidder, the company will have 60 days to vacate the property, according to park officials.

The City Park location was the only remaining location for 24-hour Morning Call. Morning Call began in the French Quarter in 1870. It moved to Severn Avenue in Metairie in 1974 and remained there until closing earlier this year. It opened the location in City Park’s Casino building in 2012.